The party must decide whether it will be “centred on one figure, one guy, or on a wider set of ideas like conservatism that can win outside the deepest red places,” Rina Shah, a Republican strategist, told the BBC.
Critics on the right – the “Never Trumpers” who opposed his first White House campaign – are pushing for a return to the Republican Party’s pre-Trump roots, citing the historic losses around the country on election night.
But simply turning back the clock on Trump will be extremely difficult if not impossible to do.
The party has been wholly transformed during Trump’s decade-long reign. Most Republicans have shifted to the right on domestic issues like immigration, and rejected the interventionist foreign policy of the George W Bush era that led to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Congress, the more moderate establishment wing of the party that disliked Trump from the start has almost entirely disappeared, replaced by conservative Trump backers who echo his nativism and populist rhetoric.
That trend continued this year, as old-guard Republicans like John Cornyn in Texas and Maine’s Susan Collins, both of whom clashed with Trump over the years, were voted out of office.
Three days after the election Trump appointed Stephen Miller as his new White House chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles.
The move signalled Trump has no plans to moderate his policies or message in his remaining years in office. Miller, who had been serving as the president’s chief domestic policy adviser, is a longtime Trump aide known for his hardline immigration policies.
